Bolton's Tory leader has warned Matt Hancock there could be "unrest" if the North West town is plunged into a local lockdown to contain the Indian coronavirus variant.
David Greenhalgh, of Bolton Council, said local lockdowns, like those imposed under England's old tier system last year, "don't work".
When the earlier curbs were imposed, he said, people simply "travelled 50 yards across the county boundary" to visit the types of hospitality venues that had been forced to close in their own area.
Mr Greenhalgh said there was a "great deal of resentment" in Bolton, which has been in various states of lockdown for much of the last year, and predicted a new local shutdown would be "a very, very difficult situation to manage".
Bolton, in Greater Manchester, has become a hotspot for the Indian variant and has the highest rate of new Covid cases in England, and Mr Greenhalgh warned that cases were still out of control.
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The surge in cases of the highly-transmissible variant has sparked fears that the Government could use local lockdowns in a bid to contain the disease.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has refused to rule them out as a way to contain the spread of the variant.
But Mr Greenhalgh suggested the Government could face a backlash if it uses local lockdowns again.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We've been there before and they don't work - not in a dense conurbation like Greater Manchester.
"This happened before, the spread increased because people travelled 50 yards across the county boundary to access hospitality that they can't in their own area."
Asked if he had told the Health Secretary Mr Hancock there would be civil unrest, he said: "I do think there is a danger of unrest..
"There is a great deal of resentment. Bolton was... we were disproportionately affected really since July last year.
"Even when our rates were coming down, we still remained in lockdown when other areas' rates were higher than ours, so there was a build up of resentment.
"The people of Bolton have a great spirit and they come together when times are difficult.
"But this would be a very, very difficult situation to manage I believe - if we went into a lockdown that we have personal experience of as a town, which did not work."
Mr Greenhalgh said there was no sign yet that cases were coming under control in Bolton, adding that "our cases are still rising".
He continued: "I think that was, to be honest, expected. We are putting all the measures in that we can at the moment.
"We have community spread, there's no doubt about that, and we're holding back a variant that would appear - although the evidence is still being gathered - to be a little bit more transmissible, easily transmissible.
"The majority of our cases are in very much our younger age groups - primary school, secondary school and in their 20s.
"We still haven't got an increase in hospitalisation and severe illness, which is hugely welcome, those figures still remain low.
"We're doing everything we can. The Government has sent in surge vaccinations, surge testing... We're doing everything we can, but I think the next two weeks we will still see our cases rising."
Figures for the seven days to May 14 show that Bolton continues to have the highest rate of new Covid cases per 100,000 people in England.
It had 867 new cases in the seven days - the equivalent of 301.5 cases per 100,000 people.
This is up from 150.2 in the seven days to May 7.
Blackburn with Darwen in Lancashire had the second highest rate, up from 86.2 to 131.6, with 197 new cases.
Bedford had the third highest, up from 64.6 to 128.1, with 222 new cases.
Bolton had the biggest week-on-week rise of any area in England, up from 150.2 to 301.5.
Meanwhile, Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London and a member of the Government’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling Group (SPI-M), told the Today programme that the June 21 date for lifting legal limits on social contact was “very much in the balance”.
Asked if it would go ahead or need to be reconsidered, he said: “I think that’s actively being considered. I think it’s very much in the balance and the data collected in the next two to three weeks will determine that.”
He said it was not yet clear how much more transmissible the Indian variant is, but added: “Certainly, it is much easier to deal with 20%, even 30% (more transmissibility) than it would be 50% or more.
“The challenge we have… is because of how it was introduced into the country.
“It was introduced from overseas, principally into people with Indian ethnicity, a higher chance of living in multi-generational households and often in quite deprived areas with high density housing, and so we’re trying to work out whether the rapid growth we’ve seen in areas such as Bolton is going to be typical of what we could expect elsewhere, or is really what is called a founder effect which is often seen in these circumstances.
“There’s a little bit of, I would say, glimmer of hope from the recent data that whilst this variant does still appear to have a significant growth advantage, the magnitude of that advantage seems to have dropped a little bit with the most recent data, so the curves are flattening a little, but it will take more time for us to be definitive about that.”
Professor Ferguson said local lockdowns were “more effective if they cover wider areas”, adding that the tier system “to some extent worked, it slowed spread”.
He said if the variant was widespread and highly transmissible, then locking down hotspot areas “may work in those areas, but just allows the rest of the country to reach a high infection level – and we know what the consequences of that were last year".
He added: “We’re in a different situation now we have high levels of vaccine coverage, so the real challenge for us as scientists and for the Government is to try and calculate – is that wall provided by vaccinations sufficient for us to keep the consequences of this Indian variant at a manageable level?”
The UK’s border has been as secure as a “sieve” during the Covid-19 pandemic, the shadow health secretary said.
Jonathan Ashworth told Sky News on Wednesday: “Our shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds has long been calling on your programme and other programmes that we need a comprehensive border policy.
“Our borders have been about as secure as a sieve throughout this crisis and it’s why we are seeing these variants bounce at us.
“There’s probably going to be more of this as well, so we have got to work internationally to bring infection rates down and make sure the world is vaccinated.
“But we have also got to have secure borders and controls as well.”
